Pellets for profits

Encina wastewater plant is the first in West to recycle sludge into material for biofuel, fertilizer

Installation of a biosolids manufacturing plant, including the dryer facility in the background, will be the last project of Mike Hogan's career at the Encina Wastewater Authority. He is retiring Wednesday.
— Eduardo Contreras / Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune

Installation of a biosolids manufacturing plant, including the dryer facility in the background, will be the last project of Mike Hogan's career at the Encina Wastewater Authority. He is retiring Wednesday.
— Eduardo Contreras / Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune

The cogeneration plant uses methane gas from the waste as fuel to generate electricity.

The plant also uses the cogeneration plant's exhaust heat to dry the sludge, cutting natural-gas consumption.

Hogan, who lives in Solana Beach, will continue in the water business after he retires from Encina. He has been on the Santa Fe Irrigation District board of directors since 2003. In 2006, he became Santa Fe's representative on the San Diego County Water Authority board.

He began in the industry in 1969 as a teenager, digging ditches and laying pipes for the county. He began taking courses at Palomar College, getting an associate's degree in wastewater technology in 1975. He later earned a degree from University of Phoenix.

“I recall the days when the old Solana Beach and Cardiff treatment plants were in San Elijo Lagoon and discharged into the lagoon,” Hogan said.

Treatment was primary, meaning it removed 60 percent to 65 percent of the solids.

In 1965, the county built a new San Elijo Water Pollution Control Facility, which improved treatment and added an ocean outfall. Hogan worked at that plant from 1972 until he took a position with Encina in 1983.

Today Encina removes 98 percent of the solids and sends the effluent into the ocean through a 1.5-mile-long pipe.

Three of Encina's six member agencies reclaim and recycle as much as 10 million gallons of wastewater before it enters Encina's process. Vallecitos recycles as much as 5 million gallons, Carlsbad 4 million gallons and Leucadia 1 million. The reclaimed water is used to irrigate golf courses and landscaping.

The use of wastewater as a supply will be vital for Southern California's future, Hogan and others said.

“The water world and wastewater world – those worlds are merging,” Hogan said, especially in places like San Diego County, which imports nearly 90 percent of its water supply from outside the region.

Ken Weinberg, director of water resources for the San Diego County Water Authority, said reclaimed wastewater has become a significant contributor to the region's supply.

“In 2020 we were projecting recycled water would meet 6 percent of the region's needs,” Weinberg said. “By 2010 we'll be there.

“That's water we don't have to import.”

Hogan said the technology and philosophy in today's treatment plant is light-years ahead of where it was four decades ago.

“We've gone to almost a zero tolerance of what we do in this business,” Hogan said. “No spill's acceptable.”

Encina's 52 acres still hold the old-style settling tanks that perform the first stage of sewage treatment.

But its administration building is high-tech, with computers flashing data about the treatment plant's processes, remote pumping stations and pipes. Operators monitor the system.

Hogan said the public's demand for cleaner wastewater has led to a more skilled work force than when he started.

“Forty years ago when you said you worked at the wastewater treatment plant ... you didn't want people to know what you did,” Hogan said.

“People who work in the wastewater industry today – they're really proud of what they do. It requires people who have the skills to do all these things.”